New Enterprise Class PCI Express Storage Solution

New Enterprise Class PCI Express Storage Solution addresses power and performance concerns

Delivering 140K random performance and 200x power reduction, the new 400GB XceedIOPS PCIe from Smart Modular Technologies raises the bar in next-generation solid-state storage.

Ismosys partners SMART Modular Technologies (Smart) and Marvell Semiconductor (Marvell ®) have collaborated in the development of a new solid state storage solution that addresses the key issues of power and performance, the top two concerns in enterprise storage today.

The Smart XceedIOPS PCIe is a 400GB solid-state storage devices that delivers 140K random performance and 200x reduction in overall data-centre power loading while eliminating the bottlenecks created by differences between the processor bandwidth and performances that plague rotating storage devices. Featuring a full-height, half-length PCI card form factor, the XceedIOPS PCIe connects directly to any computer platform equipped with an eight-lane or higher PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 slot.

According to Nigel Watts, Managing Director of Ismosys, in today’s market, enterprise and server-class data centre applications that require more than 100,000 IOPS, such as multi-million record databases, social network services, and search engines, are becoming common: “In order to satisfy the operational requirements of these applications, hundreds of short-stroked, enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) are often assembled in an expensive and power-hungry rack-based storage node. Now, the same task can be done by a single SMART 400GB XceedIOPS PCIe with the additional benefits of lower power consumption and much greater reliability” Watts said. “For instance, to achieve 140,000 IOPS a conventional implementation would require 466 HDDs. If each HDD is spinning at 15,000 RPM it’s probably consuming 14.7W, a total consumption of circa 6850W! Compare this to the 25W, which is all a single XceedIOPS PCIe needs and you realize a massive 200x reduction in power consumption”.

The XceedIOPS PCIe achieves its fast, reliable performance through the combination of Smart’s industry-standard Flash and DRAM technology and Marvell’s PCIe controller devices. The new product exploits the 32Gb/s bandwidth of the PCIe interface (8x faster than 4Gb Fiber Channel and 5x faster than SATA 3.0) to deliver industry-leading 140,000 random small block IOPS performance. Offering up to 400GB of single-level cell (SLC) Flash-based solid-state storage, the new solution features exceptional reliability due to state-of-the-art Flash management algorithms and advanced wear-leveling techniques. OEMs that require more flexibility can take advantage of the fine granularity configurability of the XceedIOPS PCIe, which can be populated with two, four, or eight storage nodes with 24GB or 50GB addressable capacity per storage node. This flexibility allows OEMs to configure the optimal storage solution, trading off performance and cost in order to best satisfy the needs of a particular application.

Sampling in Q3, the XceedIOPS PCIe will be available in production volumes beginning in Q4.

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